Guided by the Dead (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Today, I'm gonna tell you two really unbelievable stories that, you know, realistically, we don't actually know if these 100% happened, but in each story, there's pretty compelling witness testimony that at least suggests something really bizarre did happen. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload two, three, even four times every week. So if that's of interest to you, on a day that is not the Follow Button's birthday, go ahead and take them out to the Texas Roadhouse for dinner. And while you're there, tell the waitstaff it is their birthday, so they come out singing and clapping super loud, completely embarrassing the Follow Button. Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into today's stories. We'll be right back. ♪♪ ♪♪ One afternoon in February of 1949, a 17-year-old fur trapper named Donald Wellborn sat on a sled behind his elderly trapping partner, Amos Winterhawk, who was currently driving a team of sled dogs through the snowy woods of British Columbia, in Canada. It was incredibly cold out, like minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit. So Donald, the 17-year-old, he was almost entirely bundled up in flannel and wool. And, you know, just the small part of his face that was exposed was burning from the cold and the wind. So Donald was new to trapping, but Amos, on the other hand, was like a very seasoned pro who had been working for over 60 years on a very impressive 100-mile trap line, which was like a 10-mile trap line. It was like a network of animal traps that he would periodically check for game. So he's like patrolling these 100 miles in vicious weather for 60 years. And since Amos' trap line was so long and also in such a remote region, Amos, over the six decades he'd been out here, he had built all these small cabins every 20 or 30 miles or so along the line for shelter. And now Donald and Amos were on their way to one of these cabins where they planned to spend the night. And so Donald, he's just a passenger in the sled, you know, and he's like, you know, he's right behind Amos and they've been, you know, going through the snow now for quite a while. And at some point, you know, he's sort of miserable. He's freezing cold and he yells out to Amos like, hey, you know, how much longer until we get to the cabin? And Amos, without even turning around, just yells out, oh, the next cabin's 10 miles away, but it'll be even longer if you keep asking about it. And Donald could tell, like Amos was sort of giving him a hard time for basically complaining at this point. But Donald sort of worshiped Amos I mean, Amos was like his mentor. To him, you know, anything and everything that Amos said and did was like a learning opportunity. Fur trapping can be a very deadly profession. Often fur trappers work in fairly remote areas. And in this case, also in areas that had lethal temperatures. And Donald, who was really barely more than a kid at this point, you know, he viewed Amos as like the guy who was gonna keep him from dying. He was gonna teach him how to survive out here and thrive in this line of work. And also, Donald knew he really only had this one winter to soak in everything he could from Amos. Because this winter was Amos' last trapping season before he finally retired. His wife had passed away the previous summer, which had been devastating for Amos. And so it had prompted him to, you know, give up on trapping and just plan on going back home, living a quiet life until he too was able to die, hopefully a peaceful death, at which point he'd be, able to reunite with his wife again, which really was all he wanted. And so now the sled, it finally emerged from this thick tree line and they started making their way out across this expansive frozen lake. But before they'd gotten very far, like out onto this lake, they had to come to an abrupt stop because there was this huge snow drift in their way that was so tall and so wide that they realistically couldn't just, you know, get around it. They basically had to burrow their way through it. And so Amos, he turned, he turned to Donald and just said, you know, hold the reins, stay here, like stay with the dogs and all our equipment. I'm gonna go clear a path that we can just go right through this snow drift. And so Donald, you know, they had done this before. He had seen this play out before and he's like, okay. So he gets up, he sits where Amos was, he takes the reins for the dogs. And Amos, he climbs off the sled and he grabs the shovel and he walks over to the snow drift. And Donald, he's just watching this. This is not gonna be some huge ordeal. I mean, the snow was not that heavy. It might take a few minutes, but he could definitely sort of dig out a big enough path that the dogs could pull them right through. But as Amos is about to start digging, Donald hears this awful loud cracking sound. And then he watched as Amos just suddenly disappeared under the ice. The lake had cracked and he had fallen into the water. And so Donald immediately, he knows like if Amos has slipped under the ice, there's no way to get him out again, he's dead. But amazingly, he looked to where Amos had been standing and he saw Amos had not fully gone under the ice. He was managing to hold on to the lip of the ice, but barely like the rest of his body is in the frigid water. Like he needed to get out of there immediately or he would freeze to death, that would be it. And so Donald, without any hesitation, like he had been trained for what to do by Amos, if either of them in some ways had fallen into the ice. And that was the rescuer. They need to get on their bellies and basically, scoot their way over to the edge of the crack in the ice to sort of disperse their weight across the ice and then sort of pull the person while they're laying prone on the ice out of the water. And so Donald, he ditches the reins, he runs over, he's on his belly, he climbs over. Amos, you know, he's sort of in and out of consciousness. He grabs him and he's a young kid, he's strong. And he starts sort of inching his way back and he's pulling and pulling and he finally gets Amos out of the ice and he gets him on the ice. And he doesn't crack any further. And they're both for a second, just heaving. You know, they're breathing heavy. Like Amos, he's out of the water. Like, okay, we've survived this. But it's minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit out here. This is not over. The emergency is still huge. I mean, if they don't get him warmed up immediately, he's gonna freeze to death. And so Donald's like, what do I even do? And he looks over at Amos, hoping Amos has an idea. But Amos, he's passed out, he's unconscious. He's already clearly hypothermic. And from the last update he got from Amos, they're at least, you know, almost nine, 10 miles away from the nearest cabin. There is no other cabins anywhere. They are totally isolated out here. And so Donald, he's thinking, well, I have to at least try. I have to, you know, put him in the sled and at least try to get him to the cabin. I mean, I'm not gonna sit here and just wait. And so he gets up and he drags Amos over and he puts him on the back of the sled. Amos is totally unconscious. He's not responding at all. It's so cold and he's soaking wet. And then Donald, he hops in the sled. He grabs the reins and these very well-trained dogs, they're ready to go, the sled dogs. And Donald, he called out like, yeah, like, let's go. Let's go. As he had seen Amos do countless times. But the dogs didn't move. They just stood there. They refused to move. And Donald, he's getting frustrated. Like he's looking back at Amos, like they gotta go now. It's a long journey. They can't waste any time. And he's snapping the reins harder and harder. And he's trying to get these dogs to move, but they just wouldn't budge. And so in a panic, Donald, he climbs off the sled. He runs up to the dogs and literally starts trying to pull them forward, like to get them to move, but they just won't move. And that's when Donald sees the dogs. They're not just standing there doing nothing. They're standing there and they're looking out onto the lake, like in the direction where Amos had just fallen into the ice. They're looking in that direction. And Donald hadn't been paying attention to what they were looking at, but now he did. He turned and he's trying to figure out what's got their attention that is sort of keeping them from moving. And so he looks out onto the ice and all he sees is like this cloud of steam that was sort of coming up from where the break in the ice was, which wasn't unusual. Oftentimes the water underneath the frozen section of a lake when it's this cold out, the water, even though it's frozen, frigid, is still warmer than the air temperature. And so when there's a break in the ice, there's often steam that comes up and out of the water, even though, again, it's not really hot. It's just in contrast to the cold air. And so Donald's looking and he sees this steam cloud coming up off the water and he's like, why would that get their attention? This is not unique, like that can't be it. Like what's going on here? But then a second later, before Donald could get back in the sled, the dogs, they start moving. They turn and they start running straight towards like the break in the ice, towards the steam cloud. And Amos is on the back of the sled. So the dogs are running off onto the ice. Donald is not on the sled. He's just watching them run off. And he's thinking, oh my goodness, they're gonna run right for this cloud for some reason. And they're gonna go into the ice and that's it. And then, you know, Amos is dead. The dogs are dead. I'm likely dead. And so Donald, he just starts taking off towards them. Because what else can he do? He's running after them. and he's waiting, like he's looking, you know, with this horrible anticipation that they're going to all just plummet into the ice any second now, something weird happened. The steam cloud that was hovering over the break in the ice, it moved, but not the way like wind would blow a steam cloud. It was almost like it was a sentient being. It moved with intention. Instead of being over the break in the ice, it began moving along parallel along the side of this huge snow drift. And the dogs, they're clearly watching this thing and they turn and they start running after it. This cloud is going down the length of this snow drift away from the break. So the dogs and Amos in the back, they don't go into the ice. They turn and off they go. And then Donald, who's still running after them, trying to get them to stop. He doesn't even know what he's looking at now. Like, what is this cloud? He watches the cloud and the dogs and Amos in the back of the sled. They go around the snow drift and they vanish. And so Donald, like, again, what else can he do but chase after him? And he runs all the way down the line of the snow drift. He turns the corner in the direction where the dogs and the sled and everything had gone. He turns the corner and he can't believe what he sees on the other side of the snow drift that had been blocked from view when he was on the other side. There's a cabin, a cabin that he didn't even know existed that Amos certainly didn't tell him about. And so Donald's like, I can't believe this is here. Like, the sled with Amos, the dogs, they're just parked right outside of this, this cabin. The, the, the steam cloud's gone. There's nobody in this cabin. It looks, you know, like no one's there, but no time to waste. Got to go in there and take advantage. And so he, he runs inside the cabin. It wasn't locked. This was clearly like another trapper's cabin. Perhaps their trap line sort of coincided with, you know, Amos's trap line. And there was sort of a rule that Amos had told Donald that you never use other trappers' cabins unless you're truly in an emergency situation. And Donald's thinking this certainly qualifies. And so he ran right inside. He got, you know, Amos in there as well. And there was all this firewood. There's a stove and he's, he makes this big fire. And before long, Amos, who's, you know, been unconscious this whole time, as he starts to warm up, he sort of regains color in his face and he opens his eyes. It's like he's been brought back to life. And once Amos opened his eyes, I mean, Donald was so relieved. One, because he sort of loved Amos. Amos was his mentor and he thought he was going to die up until like, you know, a couple of minutes ago. And so to see him opening his eyes, that was incredible. And also he thought, you know, my odds of survival are going to jump up tremendously if Amos is alive. Like he knows what he's doing out here. And so for Donald, there was this huge relief. You know, as soon as he was back with Donald, he was like, I'm going to die. I'm going with it. Donald just told him everything that happened from when he fell into the ice to the dogs not moving to then them taking off and, and seeing this weird steam that was like moving funny. And it, it actually led the dogs and he around the snow drift to this cabin. It was like a miracle. And so after Donald had told Amos the story, he expected Amos to have a big reaction for a whole bunch of reasons. Like Amos, he basically nearly died. And by some crazy anomalous miracle situation, we found this cabin and now you're alive. But Amos just sort of grunted and was like, eh, okay. Like he wasn't surprised at all. And Donald, he couldn't help it. He was like, why are you reacting like that? What do you, what do you mean? Like, this is not a no big deal. Like, what do you think just happened? And Amos, he was like, you know, I, I bet that, uh, that steam cloud was my wife. She probably knew I didn't want to die that way. And she was leading the dogs to this cabin. Had to be her. Now, Donald didn't want to immediately, you know, try to debunk this guy's theory about his beloved dead wife. If he wants to believe it was his wife who saved him, so be it. And so Donald just was like, yeah, I guess so. Must've been her. And then they both just sat back and continued to get warmed by the fire. Donald and Amos would recuperate and eventually they would leave that cabin and go right back out into the wilderness to finish their winter trapline tour. And then they would go back to the wilderness and they would go back to the and they would make it through the rest of the winter without any more terrible accidents. But then that summer, Amos finally got what he wanted. He retired from trapping. He finally went back home to a place where he had lived with his beloved wife for so many years. And shortly thereafter, he would die a quiet, peaceful death. And Donald, after Amos's death, he was obviously very sad and he would go to the funeral to, to pay his respects and to say goodbye. And while he was there, Donald overheard some of the other mourners talking about something really strange that they had actually witnessed on the day that Amos had died. So Amos had died at the home that he had shared with his wife. And that day after his death, you know, his friends and family were trying to figure out what to do with his sled dogs, his very well-trained sled dogs. And they said that they watched as that same day, shortly after Amos's death, the dogs just took off running. Running off into the wilderness alongside this river and nobody could get them to stop. And they would say the strangest thing about it is the dogs didn't appear to just be blindly running off into the woods. They appeared to be chasing what looked like two clouds sort of hovering off the ground. And it's believed that those two clouds were Amos and his wife. At 4.45 in the morning on April 9th, 2012, a 24-year-old man named Peter sat on the couch watching TV with his wife, Anna, in the town of Labis, Malaysia. Neither of them had been able to sleep that night, which happened a lot these days because they had five young kids who were always waking them up. And that morning, you know, by 4.45 or whatever it was, they had finally just decided to give up on trying to sleep. And after all, it was almost time to get up anyways. And so now Peter was, you know, still very tired and he was sort of zoned out as he was watching the TV. And as he was doing that, Anna, who was next to him, she murmured something that he couldn't quite understand. And so Peter turned to see what his wife wanted and he saw his wife was like shaking, like her whole body was shaking as if she was having a seizure, even though, you know, he had never seen his wife before. And so Peter turned to see what his wife wanted and he saw his wife have a seizure before. She didn't have epilepsy or anything, but she very much looked like she was having a seizure. And she's looking at him with this look of just absolute terror on her face. And so Peter, he didn't know what to do if she was having a seizure. And so he just got off the couch and he grabbed his wife and he sort of gently positioned her so she was laying across the entire couch. And he kept asking her like, hey, are you okay? What's going on? Like, what's happening to you? And Anna, while she continued to shake, she was trying to say something to Peter. Like, what's going on? And he said, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't trying to tell him, presumably, what was going on. But Peter, he's listening really intently to her, and it just sounded like what she was saying was gibberish. She seemed frantic and incoherent, and Peter just couldn't understand what she was trying to say. You know, at first he's chalking it up to she's having a seizure, she can't quite talk. But at some point, he realized that she wasn't speaking gibberish as she's shaking there on the couch trying to talk to him. She was speaking a different language, one that he knew she didn't speak. Anna was speaking Mandarin, and he only knew that because he knew a few words of Mandarin, but she was speaking in basically fluent Mandarin, even though Anna and Peter only spoke Malay. Like, they didn't speak this language, and now she's having the seizure, and she's speaking a different language? And so Peter's like, what is happening here? And he's looking at his wife like completely bewildered, but then. And then she couldn't break through, and she grabbed Peter, and then she said two words that he actually did understand in Mandarin. She basically shouted, help me. And so Peter, he scooped his wife up, and he just ran out of his house and ran next door to his neighbor's house. His neighbor's name was Aman, and Aman practiced witchcraft, which is seen as a form of folk medicine in Malaysia. Now, Peter was not particularly a believer in witchcraft, but it's. It's like 5 in the morning. It's right next door. He doesn't know what's happening to his wife. He's thinking, let's just try to help my wife as fast as possible. I'll go to Aman, and if he can't help us, then I'll go, you know, travel to a hospital. It was just sort of like, how can I help my wife as soon as possible? Let's go to Aman. And so he goes to Aman's house. He's carrying his wife, who by now has stopped seizing. She's gone limp. She's not making any sound. She's still breathing, but she's just laying there limp, not speaking. There's no more mandarin. It's quiet. He's pounding on the door. Peter is, and Aman, he opens it up, and he looks out, and Peter's like, you got to help me. Like, you know, I don't know what's going on with my wife. She's having a seizure. Like, he's trying to quickly explain what's going on here. And Aman, he like steps back. He's looking at Peter and Anna in his arms, and he's visibly scared. He steps back into his house, and he sort of stops Peter, and he's like, you don't have to tell me. I know what's going on here. And there's a ghost, like, laying on Anna. There's a ghost on your wife's body. I've never seen this before. I don't know if I can help you. And Peter's like, what are you, talking about? Like, she's having a medical emergency here. Is there anything you can offer? Is there any medicine, anything you can do here? Like, he's not ready to digest what Amon has said about there's a ghost on my wife. He's just trying to get help really quickly. And so Amon, he's still kind of scared, and he's definitely looking at Anna like there's something going on with her that's really upsetting to him. But he eventually says, you know, I have an idea. Why don't you bring her in? I have a ritual that I think will help us communicate with this ghost. And again, Peter, he's in full-blown crisis mode here. He doesn't necessarily think this is the right pathway to helping his wife, but he's got little choice here. He's like, you know what? I'm going to go in here. I'm going to do this ritual. And very quickly, if it's not working, I'm going to leave and bring her to the hospital. And so into the house he goes. Half an hour later, as the sun was just starting to rise, Peter and Amon were now outside in this tent in the front yard of Amon's house with Anna lying on the ground inside of this tent between the two men. And Anna, you know, she clearly was breathing, but she was not, again, having, you know, that seizure. She wasn't spouting off Mandarin or Malay for that matter. She wasn't talking at all. But now she had been positioned for this ritual that Amon had in mind to try to communicate with this ghost. And so Peter and Amon were outside in this tent in the front yard of Amon's house with Anna lying on the ground inside of this tent between the two men. She wasn't spouting off Mandarin or Malay for that ghost. And again, Peter's going along with it, but already he's thinking, like, what am I doing here? I gotta get out of here. But Amon told him, like, let me just try. Let me just try doing this. And so the two men, they're in position. And, you know, Amon looked at Peter and said, are you ready? Are you ready to do this ritual? And Peter took a deep breath and he's like, okay, yes. And then Amon, he began sprinkling turmeric powder on Anna's body along with these grains of rice. And as he was doing this, he began asking her to speak, asking the ghost, the entity to speak. And Anna, she began to move. She began to twitch. And then she opened her mouth. But when she spoke, it was that same, like, indecipherable mix of languages. It was Mandarin. It was Malay. But it was a lot of Mandarin. And it was just, it sounded like gibberish, really, to Peter and also to Amon as well. Like, they didn't know what she was saying. And she was clearly getting frustrated. She was trying to tell them something. She kept asking more questions. And it's like, her body's starting to tense some more. And there's this look of terror on Anna's face. And so eventually, when both Peter and Amon felt like, like, we are not doing much here. We've gotten her to speak, or the ghost to speak, in Amon's opinion. But, like, we don't know what she's saying. And so Amon's like, hold on to Peter. I'm going to get my neighbor. He speaks Mandarin. He'll know what she's saying if that's what she's saying. And so Peter's left in the tent with his wife, who's, like, shaking on the ground. And she's saying things to him. And he's like, I'm going to get my neighbor. And he's got no idea what they mean. And she looks so frustrated and so scared. And then a moment later, Amon comes back in the tent. And he's, you know, brought along this guy who is now their translator. He speaks fluent Mandarin. And as soon as he's in the tent with them, you know, he's sort of been briefed up on what's going on here. And he's remarkably calm, all things considered. I mean, this is a pretty crazy thing that's going on here. But he quickly understands the assignment. And once Amon, you know, sprinkles more powder and drops more rice on Anna, and gets her to really come forward and say what she got to say, you know, the ghost is really who he's talking to here, she begins speaking more and more and more. And this time, the translator, he's listening to her. And he's hearing her story. And he's sort of bewildered by it. And he's relaying it to Amon and to Peter. Through the neighbor, Anna, what she was saying in Mandarin, was that she was not actually Anna. She was, in fact, a 17-year-old girl named Chong Ming. She said that she was from China. But she'd been going to a school in a town in Malaysia, close to where Anna and Peter lived. And three days ago, she said she had been hit by a truck and killed. But her spirit had come back and possessed Anna's body, that's what was happening now, because she needed them to go to the police. When Anna finally finished speaking, like when she was done telling the story that was translated through the neighbor to Peter and to Amon, Anna, like actual Anna, it was like she came back. You know, she suddenly was, like, breathing really heavily. And she's looking up at her husband, Peter, with this totally bewildered look in her eyes. And for the first time since all of this had started a couple of hours ago, Peter felt like he was looking at his wife again, like she was back. And so Peter, he asked Anna, like, "Are you okay?" And Anna, you know, speaking in her normal voice, speaking in Malay, she's like, "Oh my God, what happened?" And she throws her arms around him and she just sobs into his shoulder. Like, she's just so upset. She's scared, but she clearly doesn't even know what's just happened. And Peter, he doesn't know what's just happened. He's just glad it's over. He's glad his wife appears to be back. And for a minute, he was just holding her, you know, consoling her. And then at a certain point, she leaned back and she's looking around, realizing where she is, you know, who's in the tent with them. And she's like, "What's going on?" And Peter and Amon, and also the translator, would, you know, tell her what they witnessed, what she was saying, and this crazy story about how she was just possessed by this girl, you know, who was killed by a truck. And as they're telling her this, you know, Anna was getting more and more frightened. Like, this was not helping her at all. This was making it way worse. And so Peter, like he told his wife, "Don't worry. We'll tell them everything. It's going to be just fine." But inside, Peter was thinking, as he and Amon, and the translator, and his wife, as they're making their way to go tell the police, he was thinking to himself, "What's going to happen here is we're going to go to the police, we're going to tell them, and they're going to tell us that, no, like, no girl was hit by a truck a few days ago. This didn't happen." And he's thinking that's going to be comforting, to know that this didn't happen. This is like, "I don't know what this is, but it's not real." However, they go to the police. And so while they're telling the story to the officer, Peter's thinking, like, how ridiculous this sounds. Like, they're going to think we're crazy. But to his surprise, Peter's surprise, at the end of the story being passed along to the officer, the officer says, you know, "I don't know what to make of your story, but I'll say that three days ago, there was a fatality. There was a 17-year-old young Chinese girl who was hit by a truck and killed. And we arrested the driver of that truck. Like, we're waiting to pursue charges against that guy." And when he said that, Anna, who, you know, ever since coming out of her trance, had acted exactly like herself this whole time, from the front over to the police station, she had been acting like herself. It was like a switch had flipped, and she was back to being the spirit of Chong Ming. Her body began to twitch, and she began speaking in Mandarin all over again. And the translator who was with them just began automatically translating into Malay, so the officer and Peter and Iman could understand. The words that were coming out of Anna's mouth that seemed an awful lot like the words of the spirit of Chong Ming, this young girl who had died, were that she was begging this police officer not to pursue charges against the man who drove the truck that killed her, but instead to do the opposite, to let him go, that this was not his fault, that this wasn't even an accident. She had wanted to die. She explained, again, the voice of Chong Ming coming through Anna, through this translator, explained that she had broken up with her boyfriend, and she was so distraught, she had thrown herself in front of that truck. And the truck driver had even swerved to avoid her, and she had leapt to make sure she was struck by the truck. She had taken her own life. It was not his fault, and they needed to let him go. Moments later, Anna became herself again. She was no longer possessed by Chong Ming. And she's again like, "What just happened?" And everyone's kind of looking at each other like, "What's going on here?" And as unbelievable as this whole series of events were, the police, they ultimately did look more closely at the accident that had claimed the life of that 17-year-old girl, whose name was Chong Ming, and they found there was a witness who had not come forward to that point, who said, "Actually, yeah, I saw that girl jump in front of the truck. She definitely did this to herself." And so, the driver was released. Now, no one has ever actually been able to fully explain how in the world Anna, who did not know, Chong Ming, somehow knew all these details of this crash. But whether you believe in ghosts or not, it was Anna's story, or more specifically, the story that came through her, Chong Ming's story, if you will, that closed this case. A quick note about our stories: They are all based on true events. But we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. The Mr. Ballin Podcast: Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bone and Cole Lacascio. This episode was written by Kate Murdock. Research and fact-checking by Shelly Hsu, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fasciano. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Lacascio and Jordan Stidham. Production support by Antonio Minata and Delaina Corley. Artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner. Theme song, Something Wicked, by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballin Podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballin YouTube channel that very same day. And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballin. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad-free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts, or visit SiriusXM.com slash podcast plus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time. See ya. you